West Hempstead Now and Then

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

The following article appeared in the February 2019 edition of the WHCSA News and Views Newsletter

Image of the WH war memorial cannon that stood at the LIRR station Plaza

This past November marked the hundredth anniversary of the end of WWI, and provides an opportunity to focus upon a long lost feature on the West Hempstead Landscape, the West Hempstead WWI Memorial Monument. The following is the story of this short lived shrine.

The driving force behind this local war memorial was the nascent American Legion Cathedral Post 1087, whose charter was presented at a Nassau County meeting six years earlier on February 24, 1933. Cathedral Post 1087 was ably led by veterans who were also residents and businessman of West Hempstead, like their first commander John A. Palmer, who owned a meat store on Hempstead Turnpike and was also a founding member and Vice President of the WH Board of Trade, forerunner to the WH Chamber of Commerce. In the ensuing decade, more than 100 dedicated members of this post organized local civic events in West Hempstead, such as lectures and winter festivals complete with Santa Claus appearances, which won them multiple national awards from the American Legion for the most active post in the region. In the early years of the Cathedral Post, one of its first orders of business was to address the lamentable absence of a war memorial within West Hempstead. Other than a simple marker and flag mast to the USS Maine and veterans of the Spanish American War, located at the Church of Good Shepherd on Maple St., no other memorial to American veterans had heretofore existed in West Hempstead. (As an aside, the remaining concrete marker of this memorial still exists on the grounds of the current location of the Church of Good Shepherd on Donlon Avenue). Donations were collected and designs submitted for a worthy monument to be constructed at West Hempstead’s busiest location at the time, the WH railroad station plaza.

Finally, on a pleasant late spring Sunday on June 4, 1939, officers and members of the Cathedral Post, along with a slew of representatives of area civic groups, gathered at the railroad station plaza to dedicate their long awaited war memorial to local veterans of World War I. The chosen design was created by a WH sculptor and Post veteran named Edwin T. Howell and consisted of a boulder upon which was a plaque, tersely inscribed with the immortal phrase from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “That this nation might live”. Next to the monument was a 12 ft long navy gun that had seen action during WWI, mounted onto a white cement base. Along with the many dignitaries who were there, some 2,000 participants and spectators joined the spectacle.The memorial was intended to primarily honor veterans of the Great War, which had ended only 20 years earlier and during which all members of the local American Legion post had served their country. However, being that WWI was at the time considered the “war to end all wars”, it was decided that servicemen of all American wars were also included in the commemoration.

Those 2,000 celebrants who came home the next day to read about coverage in the Nassau Daily Review Star of the ceremony they had just attended would have also noticed a top-fold headline on the same page that blared “Military, Economic Rearmament to Continue, Nazis Say”, which describing Germany’s belligerence less than three months before they were to invade Poland. Notwithstanding that premonition, few would have presaged that only three months later, Germany would invade Poland, setting off the tragic and costly events of World War II.

After the December 7, 1941 attack at Pearl Harbor, the US was abruptly drawn into WWII. By 1942, American resources were severely strained to support an all-out war effort that would be fought in two major theatres. Citizens on the Home Front were asked to sacrifice whatever they could to help out the war effort. These sacrifices came in the form of mass enlistments, purchasing war bonds, planting “victory gardens” to avert food shortages, abiding by strict fuel rations and donating scrap metal, among other things.

As WWII went into full gear, and in response to a plea by the War Department to alleviate a scrap metal shortage, members of the Cathedral Post did what they thought their deceased comrades for whom they erected the memorial would have have wanted them to do. They made the decision to dismantle the navy cannon and donate it to the war effort as a supreme token of their patriotism. As solemn a decision that was, they took their inspiration from those timeless words of Abraham Lincoln that graced their commemoration plaque - “That this nation might live”. At 5:00 p.m. on September 23, 1942, as the Marines were sending reinforcements to Guadalcanal and the Allies were fighting their way up the Italian Peninsula, Cathedral Post Commander Chauncey A. Rich took a blowtorch to the navy cannon to be broken down for scrap.

This Memorial Day, as we end the parade at West Hempstead’s current war monument at Echo Park, we should all celebrate the West Hempstead WWI ornamental that never had a chance to survive thanks to the patriotic spirit of our bygone members of the WH community.

Friday, October 20, 2017

The following essay appeared in the Winter 2018 edition of the WHCSA News & Views newsletterLast year’s demolition of the large estate at
764 Hempstead Avenue and subsequent subdivision provides an opportunity to
reflect upon the development of West Hempstead as a residential community. At 1.66 acres, the parcel represented the
last remaining large residential tract in West Hempstead, and has given way to
the erection of eight homes in its place.
Over the past three years, the process took on a certain inevitability
ever since the place was sold to a developer in 2014, knowing that it was only
a matter of time before proper permits were obtained to tear the structure
down. As a historian, I view this event
with the sad realization that the transformation of West Hempstead from a once sprawling
rural suburb into an overdeveloped neighborhood, is now complete. This transformation began at the start of the
20th century with the development of the Fairlawn Park subdivision in 1906, and
continued steadily with two notable growth spurts; one, after the West
Hempstead LIRR line was electrified and the Southern Parkway was completed in
1926 and 1927, respectively; and the other, after WWII and the coming of the
baby boomer generation.

To me, the moment a suburb has been denuded of
its great residential landmarks and replaced with neatly packed in 60x100
cookie cutter homes reminiscent of the green and red properties of a Monopoly
board, it has lost a large part of its unique identity, and in many ways
becomes indistinguishable from its neighboring megalopolis to the west. In
this, I am reminded of what Allen Ginsberg once referred to as the “invisible
suburbs”, having fallen prey to Molloch, the pagan god of industrialized
overdevelopment.

In my mind, the lovely home was emblematic of
West Hempstead’s working class roots, a domicile that seemed roomy and
comfortable but not overly ostentatious like the grand estates of Garden City;
one that seemed to place greater value upon its expansive surrounding open
spaces than its living quarters per se.
The style of the house, with its stucco exterior and Mediterranean roof,
perhaps reflected the tastes of the two families that occupied it over the
years, both of which were of Italian extraction.

The origin of the home follows the story of
American upward mobility in the 1920s, when an Italian immigrant named Joseph
Cavallaro and his wife Annie moved out from Brooklyn, after Joseph built up a successful business
importing fruit and other goods. He died
in 1939, and Annie continued to live in the home until her passing in
1947. The following year the home was
sold to Theodore Gaeta and his wife Rose. Gaeta was a well known restaurateur on Long Island who owned
and managed a number of popular upscale eating spots across the Island. Early on,
he managed the Cas-Albi Lounge and Restaurant, located inside the Mineola Hotel
on 2nd street in Mineola. In 1966, the
Mineola Hotel became victim of a terrible fire and never reopened. Thereafter Gaeta embarked upon a prolific
food service career, running eateries that were well known jaunts on both the North and South shores: the Swan Bay Inn in Centerport, the Gaetway Harbour Restaurant, the West
Wind Yacht Club and the Schooner Restaurant, all in Freeport, the Vernon Valley
Inn in East Northport, the Gaetway North Steakhouse in Huntington, and the Gaetway
South in Bay Shore. In the mid 1960s,
after being inspired by a trip to Hawaii, he opened the Polynesian themed Bali
Hai Restaurant in Northport. Ted Gaeta
was reportedly a ubiquitous presence at all his establishments, and would often
know and greet his regular patrons by name.
He was an active member of the Freeport Chamber of Commerce and received
numerous accolades for improving the business character of the Village and was
involved in numerous toy and food drives over the years. He was well acquainted with celebrities and
politicians, like Alfonse D’amato, who would frequent his restaurants. Gaeta died in 1989 at age 92, and Rose passed
away in 2000.

There was a time, recently enough for people
who are still alive to remember, when travelers could drive along Hempstead
Ave. from Nassau Blvd. to Locust Street and spot perhaps a mere half dozen
homes that lined the avenue. As they
would travel north, to the left was the picturesque watering hole that was
Halls Pond, and on their right, they would pass the stately home of interior
designer Edith Hebron at the northeast corner of Eagle Ave, which was
eventually turned into the Maison Pepi/ Gum Ying restaurant before it was
knocked down and replaced by a CVS. (In
that instance, the words of the Joni Mitchell song seem all too appropriate: “Don't it always seem to go That
you don't know what you've got til its gone, They paved paradise And put up a
parking lot”). Further up on the right
was they would pass the Cavallaro/ Gaeta home and then the large Norwood Villa
Hotel at the corner of Oak(ford) St.
Another 200 yards and they would see the Alexander Nelson estate at Elm
st, and across the street from there they would find the Collins estate. With the demise of 764 Hempstead Ave, an
irreplaceable piece of old West Hempstead has died along with it, and signaled
the close an era when our neighborhood was once characterized by country homes
and open spaces.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

The following essay appeared in the Winter 2017 edition of the WCHSA New & Views newsletter

NCPD Officer Matthew Giglio

The recent deaths of two individuals with a local connection provide an opportunity to revisit the somber history of a cop shooting in West Hempstead whose effect still carries strong reverberations, despite the long passage of time. The shooting occurred on October 7, 1975 and took the life of NCPD Officer Matthew Giglio, after a courageous two month struggle for his life at Mercy Hospital. This past August 4, Giglio’s killer, John MacKenzie, died in prison after an apparent suicide, while serving a 25 years to life sentence. And more recently, our friend and resident of nearby Malverne, NYPD Detective Steven MacDonald, himself a victim of a 1986 shooting while on duty, passed away on January 10.

There are few residents of West Hempstead who have resided here long enough to remember the only cop killing to have occurred in our hamlet. Indeed, most people walk right past the scene of the crime, right in the center of town along Hempstead Avenue, with nary a clue as to what transpired there. The following is a synopsis of the incident.

Since 1948, the row of shops at the corner of Hempstead Ave and Locust St. have occupied a prominent place on West Hempstead’s landscape.

One of these stores, Filnord’s Pharmacy at 492 Hempstead Ave, was the site of WH’s first permanent post office. The 1960s saw the popular Tony’s Delicatessen as the occupant at 486 Hempstead. By 1971, Tony’s gave way to a boutique clothing store called Thelma J’s, the kind of which was more common back in those days but rarely seen today. It was outside this boutique where the shooting occurred. On October 4th, MacKenzie and his accomplice, Colleen Irby, cased out Thelma J’s in the guise of customers, when MacKenzie asked to use the bathroom in the back of the store which contained a window facing the rear of the building. On a typical cool early morning of October 7th, 1975, two Nassau County patrol officers responded to a burglary at Thelma J’s, where it was reported that hundreds of articles of clothing were stolen. At 2:30am, the two officers on the scene questioned Irby, who was sitting in a car at the back of the store and called for backup, whereafter Officer Giglio, working as a police EMT, promptly arrived at the scene. Upon arrival, Giglio spotted MacKenzie exiting the front of the store when MacKenzie fired his gun, striking Giglio in the abdomen. The two officers rushed to Giglio’s aid and drove him to Mercy Hospital in his own ambulance. At the hospital doctors made the bleak discovery that the bullet had hemorrhaged Giglio’s aorta.

Back at the scene, hundreds of police officers, as well as two police helicopters, descended upon West Hempstead and started a massive manhunt for the shooter. At 10:00am, officers found MacKenzie hiding out in a nearby garage and located the weapon nearby as well. At the hospital, Giglio underwent eight hours of surgery and received 35 pints of blood in a desperate attempt to save his life. In the first few days, Giglio was able to communicate by scribbling simple messages on a piece of paper, but then he slipped into a coma, never to recover. As weeks passed, Giglio developed an infection in his leg, which required an amputation. All the while, his comrades and family members kept a bedside vigil, praying that he might rally. Local churches and synagogues also held special prayer services for Giglio until he took his final breath after a seventy day battle, on December 16th.

Matthew Giglio was born in 1940 in Brooklyn. One might say he was a typical Italian kid who tore up the stick ball circuit on the Borough Park streets where he grew up, and savored the victory of the Dodgers’ World Series win when he was 15 years old. Giglio moved out to Long Island and chose his calling as a police officer, like his father who was a patrolman for the NYPD. Giglio was in his eleventh year of service, and lived in Valley Stream with his wife and three children in 1975. Nassau County later honored Officer Giglio by dedicating the Matthew F. Gilgio Memorial Plaza at intersection of Corona Avenue and Dutch Broadway, not far from where Giglio lived and a few blocks from the 5th Precinct headquarters where he was based. In July 1976, MacKenzie was put on trial and convicted with 1st degree murder and given a 25 years to life sentence. Four years later, the NY Court of Appeals vacated his sentence and a retrial was ordered after the US Supreme Court affirmed the decision, after it was established that MacKenzie’s confession was improperly obtained. The case established guidance for police officers that is in use to this day, that if the suspect immediately requests a lawyer, then any subsequent confession cannot be entered as evidence, unless in the presence of the suspect’s legal counsel. In any event, the case was retried and once again MacKenzie was convicted and sentenced, making him eligible for parole in 2000.

Every two years since then, MacKenzie’s parole hearing has stirred up the passions of politicians and police benevolent groups, urging that his parole be denied. MacKenzie had exhibited remorse for the killing but always maintained that he didn’t know that Giglio was a cop, and he couldn’t remember details of the incident because he was on drugs. After his last denial in June 2016, Mackenzie gave in to despair and committed suicide in his cell on August 4.

A couple years ago I had the privilege of meeting Detective Steven MacDonald after he and his wife Patty graciously offered to drive me home from Manhattan. During that ride, Mr. MacDonald gave me a copy of a book that he wrote where he outlined his remarkable journey toward ultimately forgiving his shooter and finding peace in his life. My brief encounter with Steve and his book left a deep impression on me and caused me to bring new meaning to my understanding of human strength and courage.

The confluence of MacKenzie’s and MacDonald’s deaths this past year, together with this past Law Enforcement Appreciation Day on January 9th, one day before MacDonald’s passing, gives us all cause to be grateful for the lives of our loved ones and those tasked to protect them.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Tanglewood Preserve - Site of First Revolutionary War Skirmish on Long Island

The following essay appeared in the Winter 2016 edition of the West Hempstead Community Support Association newsletter, News & Views

A view of the pond at Tanglewood Preserve, Nassau County

Some time ago, while browsing through some of the West Hempstead Historical Society website’s growing collection of local historical material, I came across an item regarding a little known Revolutionary War incident that took place just down the road in present day Lakeview, at the current site of Tanglewood Preserve. The episode became known as the Skirmish at Hempstead Swamp. While the incident in and of itself was a relatively minor one, I decided to find out some background about it and was surprised to learn that it actually represents the first action during the American Revolution that involved bloodshed on Long Island between the warring parties.

There are scant details of the event. One of the only sources we have about it comes from a book published in 1844 entitled Revolutionary Incidents in Queens County, by Henry Onderdonk Jr.

Here is some brief background about it.

In colonial times, Pine Stream used to run free and clear from Hempstead Plains down through modern day West Hempstead, where it formed a series of ponds and swampland all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean. Part of that tributary, Tanglewood Preserve was once a swamp that sat just north of Smith’s Pond, known in those days as DeMott’s pond, named after Michael DeMott and his son Anthony, who ran a mill at the southern end of the pond, where the water crosses Merrick Road in Rockville Centre. In fact, the name Tanglewood bears an echo of testimony to the swamp that once enveloped the property.

Throughout the South Shore of Long Island, there was heavy loyalist sentiment among residents in the leadup to the American Revolution. Parenthetically, this was the apparent reason for the Break-off of the Town of North Hempstead, whose residents were frustrated by their southern neighbors’ loyalty to King George III, from the greater Town of Hempstead.

According to George Combes, historian for the TOH in the 1940s, many South Shore residents were initially sympathetic to the Patriot cause, particularly after British troops landed in Boston in 1775. But a series of actions perceived to be too aggressive on the part of the Patriots, including a raid upon Long Island by the New Jersey militia in April of 1776, crystallized sentiment in the area solidly for the British.

In July of 1776, around the time of our Nation’s independence and a full month before General Howe’s troops arrived in New York, some loyalists had tried to subvert the cause of independence by attempting to poison George Washington by planting Paris green into his soup. The attempt failed because it made the soup taste terrible, but it certainly got the attention of our founding father. It was determined that the scheme had been hatched by loyalists from Long Island and so Washington promptly dispatched troops to Hempstead to arrest the perpetrators. The loyalists were warned in advance of these troops’ arrival and so they packed provisions and took shelter in the swamps south of Hempstead village. The DeMotts were also loyalists and they agreed to hang a white sheet in the window of their mill as a signal to warn the fugitives of the troops’ impending arrival. Onderdonk Jr. recounts the episode as it occurred on the third Saturday of July, 1776:

“...a party of Whig soldiers went to Hempstead Swamp at the head of DeMott's mill pond to takeup some Tories who were hiding there. ... A party of nine of them in two sedge boats were concealed in the swamp at the head of the mill pond. Stephen Rider climbed an oak tree to reconnoiter, when a ball whistled by his head. He saw the smoke whence it came and, a loaded gun being handed him, he fired, and the ball passed through the body of George Smith.” The Tories were then cornered and soon after surrendered. They were then rounded up and taken in chains to a jail in Jamaica but were soon freed after the British had occupied Long Island. George Smith was badly wounded in the shoulder, but was treated by a local physician named Dr. Searing, and recovered from his wound.
By then the Revolutionary War was well on its way, but most of the famous battles would be fought in other parts of the country, while for the most part, Queens (Nassau) County quietly remained under British occupation.

Although the event could hardly be considered a major action in the annals of the Revolutionary War, given the impetus for its occurrence and the fact that it saw the first blood spilled on Long Island soil in the War for Independence, in my opinion, consideration should be given to add the site to the list of New York State Revolutionary War Trail Sites of Long Island.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

The following article appeared in the Summer 2015 edition of the WHCSA's News and Views newsletter

The following paragraphs chronicle the history of 472 (formerly 318) Hempstead Ave., the subject of the accompanying photo. We begin the story in 1911, when Violet Hutcheson, daughter of Aubrey G Hutcheson, was entered into marriage with Walton McClelland Blackford, a native of Hempstead village. Aubrey Hutcheson was a very wealthy fruit importer whose name was ubiquitous at Washington Market, New York City’s most important wholesale produce market located in Tribeca. In 1890, he purchased a 100 acre country seat in West Hempstead on land that later became known as the Presidential Section, along the west side of Hempstead Avenue.

Hutcheson had nine children in all. In 1913, Hutcheson built three homes across the street for three of his children, Ralph E. Hutcheson, Howard B. Hutcheson, and Violet Blackford, shortly after her marriage. Two of these homes, those of Howard, where China Connection is currently located, and Violet, the current site of Congregation Anshei Shalom, still survive. In a sordid postscript to the original occupant of 318 Hempstead Ave., Walton Blackford remarried in 1923 whereafter he moved to Springfield, MA where he worked as a paper company executive. In May 1948 at the age of 61, he suffered a severe cerebral hemorrhage that left him paralyzed and one month later, his wife plunged a carving knife into his neck in what was described a “mercy killing”.

Some time during the Great Depression, the house was converted into St. Ann’s Health Resort, a convalescent home for the aged and infirm. In those days, such “health resorts” were common for people who were in need of extended and rehabilitative care. The accompanying picture from a 1939 postcard, was taken from the rear of the building and shows the resort’s quaint little shaded terrace in its backyard. (The postcard identifies that address at 318 Hempstead Ave., before the addresses were re-numbered by the US Postal Service in the late 1940s).

Just before WWII, the building once again changed hands and was sold to a newly married young physician named Eugene Jennings Jr. and his wife Susan. Born in the Bronx, Jennings saw action in the South Pacific theatre as a lieutenant in the the US Navy during WWII aboard the destroyer John W. Weeks. An alumnus of Columbia University and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, he was also an All-American Masters Swimmer on Columbia’s Swimming team and part of the US Masters Swimming Organization, the highest honor that can be achieved from the organization.

After the War, Dr. Jennings opened a medical practice in West Hempstead at his home. Many of our older long-time residents remember Dr. Jennings as the de facto resident physician for West Hempstead back in the days when towns all over the country had such doctors to serve them. Before the advent of urgent care and before EMS was established, Dr. Jennings’ office was the place to go locally for any medical emergencies. As well, he was the on-site first responder for all mishaps in the general vicinity that required required medical attention, such as when two Lakeview firefighters were injured when their ladder snapped during a training exercise at the Eagle Avenue school on Oct. 31, 1948. Dr. Jennings faithfully served the West Hempstead community for 27 years before retiring and moving to St. Petersburg, FL in the early 1970s. He died in 2000 at age 85, leaving a son, Eugene Thomas, two daughters, Mimsie and Leslie Ann, and many grandchildren.

In the 1980s, a young burgeoning congregation named Anshei Shalom was looking to move out of their cramped quarters on a Hempstead Avenue storefront into bigger space. When their current address became available across the street in 1985, they purchased the home and converted the main hall of the building into its sanctuary. In the early 2000s, the congregation was once again pressed for space and in 2005, they completed a new sanctuary in the rear of the building, while still preserving the front part of the house.

Friday, April 17, 2015

The article below appeared in the Spring 2015 edition of the WHCSA News & Views newsletter.

From the 1906 Belcher Hyde map of West Hempstead. Woods (Halls) Pond is in the middle of the image and the Norwood Chapel, just to the north, is labeled

The following is a brief history of the first church in West Hempstead, the Norwood Chapel.

As with so many early communities in the United States, the one feature that gave our neighborhood its unique identity and distinguished it from being a mere loose collection of farms and homes was the establishment of a community church. The church was much more than merely a house of worship. It served as a central meeting house for neighbors and was where all important social and civic gatherings would take place.

Until the 1880s, farmers and residents of the area the would come to be known as West Hempstead were served by the various parishes located in Hempstead Village. Beginning in 1885, a series of meetings were held in the old District 17 schoolhouse on John St (Nassau Blvd.) for the purpose of establishing a local church. The meetings were well received and well attended. Shortly thereafter, an organization called the Young People’s Christian Association was created, with James H. Rhodes voted as president and Henry H. DuBois as vice president. James Rhodes was a member of the prominent Rhodes family who owned a large farm along the east side of Woodfield Road that comprised most of what became known as Hempstead Gardens. Henry DuBois was a well known grocer who ran a store on Hempstead Ave. near the current location of Exit 17 of the SSP.

In 1886, it was decided that the YPCA would start a fundraising campaign to build a church edifice, but a debate ensued as to where this building would be located. Two factions emerged from this debate, each favoring either of the two tiny local commercial districts that existed in our area at the time, Washington Square and Norwood. (Washington Square was located at the intersection of Hempstead Turnpike and Nassau Blvd, and Norwood was located at the south end of Halls Pond). A vote was taken and the Washington Square faction overwhelmingly won out with 60 out of a total of 72 votes cast. However, after Hempstead Town Supervisor Martin V. Wood agreed to donate some of his land at the north end of Wood’s (Halls) Pond for the project, it was decided that the church would be built there. (The exact location was along Hempstead Avenue, opposite the intersection with Oak(ford) St.)

Fundraising continued for the next couple years, and in 1890, the church was built. Opening exercises were held on Sunday, February 2. By then, James Rhodes had moved to New Jersey and Henry DuBois took over as president. The new non-denominational church, named Norwood Chapel, was a tremendous source of pride for the community, as the funds and actual construction of the building were almost exclusively the results of local efforts.

In 1892, the building was enlarged to accommodate a Sunday School. For the ensuing decade, the pastorship of the church was given to a roving group of guest preachers who were invited to address the congregation. It’s worthy to note that at times some local women also took turns to preach, including Viola DuBois (Henry H DuBois’ daughter and Josie Hull, daughter of John P Hull, a local carpenter who lived across the street from the chapel). By 1898, it seems that Rev. Joseph McCoun from Floral Park became the regular preacher for the next number of years.

The chapel also became the default location for social and civic activity in WH. Before the Chestnut Street schoolhouse was built in 1912, it was literally the only viable public place of assembly in West Hempstead. In fact, it was was where School District 27 was conceived and voted for. The chapel played host to the civic meetings of the West Hempstead, Lakeview and Hempstead Gardens Association and WH gas and lighting district was also formed from a series of meetings there.

Some time in the late 1910s, the Norwood Chapel disbanded and West Hempstead was once again left without a church, until the establishment of the Church of the Good Shepherd in 1925. The Church of the Good Shepherd currently resides in its second location on Donlon Ave. after it moved from its original location on Maple Street in Hempstead Gardens. (The original building burned down in the 1960s, however, the WH Historical Society has a nice photo of the original church in its archives.) Thereafter, in a very short period, WH gained three more churches in short succession. Starting with Union Gospel Tabernacle on Morton Ave. in 1926 (currently a Haitian church); Trinity Lutheran Church in 1927, and St. Thomas the Apostle in 1931.

Monday, October 13, 2014

The following collection of photos below tell the story of a bygone era when kids from West Hempstead and its environs would frequent Wall's Pond year-round for an array of recreation opportunities, from swimming and boating in the summer, to skating and sledding in the winter. All photos (with the exception of the above photo, courtesy of the WH Historical Society) come from the pages of the now defunct Nassau Daily Review-Star between the mid '30s and early '50s, the paper of record for all local news in Central-Southern Nassau County during that period. As can be seen in the photos, Wall's Pond got alot of heavy use in those days as a favorite watering hole for youngsters looking for a good pastime activity, and they highlight just how rural our community was back then. In 1961, Nassau County purchased the land surrounding what was then called Wall's Pond and developed a park that they named Hall's Pond Park, to honor the family of an early owner of the property, Martin V. W. Hall. The irony contained in the County's purchase and development is that it marked a turning point for Hall's Pond Park when it was no longer used for the activities illustrated below, but was instead converted into a "passive park". A separate post is needed to explain (i.e. complain about) how that ended up happening. For now, step back into yesteryear and enjoy the photos. As a frame of reference, I left in the photo captions included in the newspaper for better explanation. BTW - virtually all references to the pond at that time had it as "Wall's Pond", not "Hall's Pond".

1) The old Boy Scout rhyme about ice-pond safety went something like this: 1 inch - stay away, 2 inches - one may, 3 inches - small groups, 4 inches - O.K. The photo below shows that back in the 1930s, winters were cold enough for a sufficiently long time to freeze over Wall's Pond and make it safe for any kind of winter activity.

2) In the summer of 1935, a 12 year-old boy named Walter Frederick, who lived just down the road from Wall's Pond on Hawthorne St, got a nasty bite on his leg while swimming at the north side of the pond. A year later, he got his revenge when his attacker was caught, a 35lb turtle who would angrily fend off anyone who dared invade his habitat. The photo below (which unfortunately got overexposed when converted to .pdf) shows the police officers in the process of corralling the turtle, to be later transported to a menagerie that State troopers maintained at Belmont Lake State Park.

3) Below is a scene that would be utterly unimaginable today; on an unusually hot spring day in April 1938, a group of four boys took the opportunity to raft out on the pond on a makeshift boat made by cutting an oil tank in two.

4) Here's another great shot from late June, 1939 of a boy paddling out with an acquaintance on a home-made boat that he christened the H.M.S. Foo.

5) June, 1940. Apparently at least some of the shoreline of Wall's Pond was sufficiently deep enough for brave divers to jump headlong into the water. Bottom image, on the shore, a sunbather smiles for the photo.

6) Most people today who would catch the scene depicted below would undoubtedly call the police - two boys, ages 9 and 8 on their skiff, getting their rods ready for a day of fishing on Wall's Pond. In 1949, it was a common sight.

7) As late as the summer of 1951, much of West Hempstead was still rural farmland. A favorite pastime of the young farmhands of the area, such as Christian Limbach, below, whose family ran a farm down the road in Lakeview, was fishing. The Daily Review-Star photographer caught the young boy napping, while holding onto his rod.

8) In 1937, the Nassau Daily Review-Star ran a contest called the "Lucky Circle" where they would publish a photo of a crowd engaged in some activity somewhere in Nassau County, and circle one face in the crowd. If the person circled in the photo would then call up the newspaper's office and correctly identify themselves, they would win a prize. The grand prize for the lucky winners? A whopping $2 (no small sum during the Depression). The photo below showing a group of ice skaters on Wall's Pond appeared on the front page of the Dec. 14, 1937 edition of the Daily Review-Star. Two days later Eileen Dillon of Rockville Centre correctly identified herself and claimed her prize.

9) Below is a photo of two girls lacing up their ice skates at Wall's Pond during a late winter cold spell in early 1950. From the newspaper's masthead, which I have included, it looked as though the snow would turn to rain the following day

10) The old conventional wisdom states that back in those days, Pine Brook, which flowed into Wall's Pond, ran clear as a mountain stream and provided swimmers with clean and sanitary conditions in the pond. The photo and article below from the summer of 1941 showed that this was not always the case. Pollutants from the Garden City waste transfer station on Cherry Valley Ave further upstream, as well as dangerous contaminants from Nassau Hospital (forerunner to Winthrop University Hospital) in Mineola further north, got into the water and forced health officials to close down Walls Pond to swimming, much to the chagrin of the young bathers shown in the bottom photo. The top photo shows the lillies that used to blanket part of the pond.

11) Finally, the terrific photo below taken at the southern end of Wall's Pond in June 1939, shows a group of young swimmers along the shore. In those days, County policemen would be stationed to protect the youngsters from traffic on Hempstead Avenue and, if needed, also assume the role of lifeguard. The photo also contains an old relic that no longer exists - the concrete and steel of the northern wall of the old bridge that carried Hempstead Avenue traffic over Pine Stream. The bottom photo puts some NCPD humor on display with a deliberately misspelled sign pointing to the Wall's Pond Swimmin' Hole